


No Regrets in Springtime

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22501834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Bunny travels into Burgess only to come across Sophie! Yay! Except it’s many years into the future (I’d say she’d be anywhere from her late teens to her early twenties, but still believes). Bunny is conflicted.I loved their relationship in the movie, and I kinda wanna see a different dynamic between the two. Mainly an awkward, onesided attraction on Bunny’s part. I’m sure he still cares for her, and that would add an even cuter/funnier level to the whole thing. Like, he feels even weirder and more guilty for thinking improper thoughts about her.Have fun with this. Make it awkward, make it funny, basically destroy Bunny’s dignity is what I’m saying XDSophie can remain blissfully oblivious throughout.Bonus points if she innocently scratches behind his ears which drives him up the wall XD"I didn’t actually manage to make this silly, and the attraction isn’t only one-sided.One Easter Monday, Bunny is in a park in Burgess. He hopes to find someone who understands Spring. Sophie does, but she is so obviously mortal.
Relationships: Sophie Bennett/E. Aster Bunnymund
Kudos: 6
Collections: PookaBoo Short Fics





	No Regrets in Springtime

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/2/2013.

It’s one of the finest, mildest Easter Mondays Burgess has ever seen, if Bunny does say so himself. Why, out in Founder’s Park, the fresh, cool grass and the profusion of flowers nodding lazily back and forth in the mellow breeze make this little spot of Earth seem almost like the Warren itself, though, Bunny notes with a small, sad smile, the park is considerably more populated.  
  
The thought leads him to linger in the park, keeping his distance from the children climbing around the playground and running through the fields. Yesterday was his day for them, and, while he cares for them, he wishes now to simply be himself, and not necessarily the Easter Bunny.  
  
Eventually he makes his way to a place in the park where the grass is overlaid with the lacelike shadows of trees not yet fully leafed. He breathes deeply of the balmy air and looks over to his side, allowing himself the idle hope that he will find someone beside him who also understands Spring.  
  
His eyes widen in surprise as, upon turning, he finds he is not alone in the dappled sunlight. Beside him, on an old blanket, a young woman lies on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows so she can draw on one of the end pages of a warped, spiral-bound sketchbook. She pencils a few desultory curlicues onto the paper, and even so casually sketched, the shapes strike Bunny as familiar.  
  
“Looks like you’re drawing dreamsand,” he says, even though he knows she won’t hear him. “Or maybe frost.”  
  
Her blonde hair obscures half her face, but Bunny can see her smile mischievously, as if she has a secret. She begins to draw with more purpose, and in a few moments a simple representation of a bunny—and not just any bunny, but he, Bunny, appears on the page.  
  
“Hey, wait a minute—”  
  
She turns toward him, pushing her hair back and propping herself up on one elbow. “Hi Bunny,” she says. “Remember me? It’s Sophie.” And she smiles at him.  
  
And by rights he shouldn’t remember that smile, he shouldn’t remember any specific child’s smile, he’s seen billions, hasn’t he? And since the last time he saw her smile all the teeth that were in it have been collected and safely stored by Tooth and her fairies. But somehow her smile is the same enough for memory, though much about it, like the rest of her, is very, very different.  
  
He thought he hadn’t cared about how mortals changed. The part of him that’s not watching the sunlight shift in Sophie’s breeze-blown hair tells him he shouldn’t. _They’re not like you,_ it whispers. _They’re not like you and their changes mean death._  
  
Sophie’s giggle drowns out that whisper. “What’s the matter? You can’t be _that_ surprised that I’ve remembered you after all this time.”  
  
He carefully sits down beside her. “Most kids forget. And, honestly, we forget most kids. Once they’re grown-ups, I mean. Well. I do remember you. And I am surprised that you remember me.”  
  
She sits up, holding her sketchbook in front of her, looking at him all the while. “You are a little different from what I remember.”  
  
“Oh? How so?”  
  
“I remember you looking more like a real rabbit.” Sophie pulls up a stalk of grass and slowly worries it to pieces in her fingers as she looks away from Bunny out into the park. “False memory, I guess. But one of my earliest, most vivid memories—that now I’m sure is real—is of the Warren. There was a certain feel to it, like a piece of instrumental music that you knew was beautiful but all it left in your mind was one echoing chord. And you knew you were going to listen all your life to hear it again, and you knew you would because music that beautiful had to be played all the time, somewhere…like the first rays of sunshine at the end of winter that made you believe it was really going to get warm again—I mean, that’s what it is, literally, isn’t it?” She pulled up another blade of grass. “I’ve thought about it a lot. Every Spring, I feel that last chord echoing away…sometimes I almost regretted going to the Warren, that once. It hurt. Especially when I was a teenager. When I thought I was getting too old. Now though…I know I can’t regret it. There’re no regrets in Springtime. Everything starting anew. But still ancient. And somehow not strange.”  
  
“It’s not strange to you because you’re alive,” Bunny explains. “Every living thing knows about Spring…but not all of them can talk about it like you.”  
  
“I hope I’m making a little more sense than I did the last time I saw you.” Sophie smiles again.  
  
Bunny laughs a little. “Of course you are. Then again, all things considered, you’re a lot different from what I remember.”  
  
She stretches her legs out across the blanket. “Do you care?”  
  
 _Do I care because I like you better now or liked you better then? Do I care because your getting older means that you will die? Do I care because it’s Spring and you’re looking at me like me and not my title?_  
  
“I care,” Bunny answers. “Maybe more than I should. Sophie. I think seeing you today, for me, might end up like your memory of seeing the Warren.” He looks away. She should tell him to leave. He should leave. He shouldn’t imagine what her face would look like if she saw the Warren again. He shouldn’t be thinking that she, as she is now, is very like Springtime itself. She won’t be like this forever and it’s not right to want her to be.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be,” Sophie says, inching closer to Bunny. “For either of us.” With infinite, care, she reaches up her arm and starts to scratch behind his ears. He closes his eyes and sighs. He should really tell her to stop. The only sound he makes is a purr.  
  
“You could take me back,” she murmurs, voice almost inaudible, and Bunny knows he can’t avoid responding to that.  
  
He removes her hand from his fur. “I’m not sure that’s what you really want. After all, Springtime…”  
  
She captures his eyes with her own. “I know what Springtime means.” And she looks away. “Am I too old? Should I have looked for you when I was sixteen? You needn’t keep me, I just need—no, it’s just want—I just want to see the Warren again.”  
  
“But Sophie, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You just want to see the Warren again. You say I needn’t keep you—but I—I would want to. Too old. You would not believe how old I am, Sophie. Do you know how short a time it will seem to me before you die? No, you are not too old. But you are human.”  
  
“Do you care?” She asks, looking at him again.  
  
Bunny shakes his head. “But I should. Spring may not be strange, but this is.”   
  
“My first memories were of magic. What’s strange? I want to see the Warren again. And maybe that’s not all. I haven’t just been thinking Springtime in the abstract all my life.”  
  
“For all my magic, I can never look human.”  
  
“All right. That’ll let me know that this isn’t a fairy tale. That it’s real. That my memories are real. And that I shouldn’t regret Springtime.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> #does this ship have a name?
> 
> tahliamalfoydepp said: this really deserves more attraction, I ship the so much!


End file.
